SERVICE LEVEL MANAGEMENT

Service Level Management is the primary management of IT services, ensuring that agreed services are delivered when and where they are supposed to be delivered. The Service Level Manager is dependent upon all the other areas of Service Delivery providing the necessary support that ensures the agreed services are provided in a secure, efficient and cost effective manner.

There are a number of business processes that form part of Service Level Management. These are:

These days, a growing trend is IT outsourcing, either in parts or in whole. V3iT understands and addresses this aspect ofbusiness and the underlying importance very practically.

Service Level Agreements

A critical part of service level management pertains to service level agreements. A Service Level Agreement, or SLA, is fundamental to service provision, from the perspective of both the supplier and the recipient. It essentially documents anddefines the parameters of the relationship itself.

The quality of the service level agreement is therefore a critical matter. It is not an area that can be left to chance, and must command carefully attention.

The SLA itself must be of sufficiant detail and scope for the service covered. Typical SLA sections include: Introduction, Scope of Work, Performance, Tracking and Reporting, Problem Management, Compensation, Customer Duties and Responsibilities, Warranties and Remedies, Security, Intellectual Property Rights and Confidential Information, Legal Compliance and Resolution of Disputes, Termination and Signatures. Other sections of course may be applicable.

Each of these sections must be carefully crafted to ensure that the agreement properly defines the service to be delivered. This is certainly not a trivial task.

Fortunately, much of the spade work can be taken out of the task via the use of pre-written material derived from several years of V3iT's experience.

The outsourcing of IT and other services is now a common and established phenomena. It can be viewed in many different ways, but certainly NOT as a route to passing on responsibility for service management or IT service management.

The fact that the IT or other functions are performed by a third party organization does not mean that ultimate management responsibility changes. The method of management may vary, but responsibility will not. In many cases, the quality of thein-house management will actually be more critical in these scenarios.

V3iT and Outsourced Services

It could be argued that the fact that a function is delivered externally requires even more stringent and disciplined management structures than internal delivery. Certainly, there are a significant number of aspects that require close attention and for which the application of standardized disciples such as those recommended by ITIL disciplines and these can bring substantial benefits.

The application of such disciplines is actually core in many of these areas. The different issues still need to be tackled, perhaps through slightly different methods: Problem Management, Change Management, Service Level Management, Continuity Management, etc. Are these, and other disciplines, not central issues to an outsourcing arrangement? To the management of aservice delivered by a third party?

Of course they are!

Certain disciplines will emerge as fundamental, such as Service Level Management. Others will be employed more actively during the outsourcing transition. However, the use of standardized disciplines will certainly help ensure a more rigorous and robust arrangement, which ultimately should benefit both parties.

Standardized Outsourcing Aids

We have, in fact, recently identified a tool which specifically uses such standardized disciplines to help organizations manage their initial and ongoing outsourcing arrangements. Our IT outsourcing strategy and toolkit includes components and documents to assist those undertaking an outsourcing operation.

These include a pre-written service level agreement, a benchmarking audit kit, a service level requirements template, a blueprint outsourcing contract, a transition plan guide and various other outsourcing related documents.

Outsourcing And Security

Again, security is an issue for which ultimate responsibility cannot be readily transferred. It must be managed. Within an outsourcing scenario, much of the emphasis will naturally shift towards agreements and contractual controls. Particular care should therefore be applied during project inception to ensure that these are not only in place, but are fully adequate and appropriate.